


Presumption

by Code16



Series: load bearing [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Omegaverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 20:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3823480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Code16/pseuds/Code16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world does not constrain to neat partitions, nor people to your dictations.</p><p>Some things about Laurel, in this verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reacquaintance

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The relevant episode is 1.01

Tommy stops the car near the law firm where Laurel works now, but pauses suddenly before getting out.

“There’s something you might want to know.” He doesn’t continue, and Oliver finally prompts him.

“Yes?” 

“Never mind.” It’s obvious that this is about Laurel. The most predictable possibilities present themselves to him. Has she Bonded with someone? Someones? He ignores the pang this causes him. Laurel deserves the best of people. He’s certainly not suitable for the role.

 

Inside the office, he waits until he can feel two voices and two auras coming toward him. A Beta he doesn’t know and … Laurel? It has to be Laurel, he could never fail to recognize her aura, and it’s her voice when he turns to look. But her aura is… different. Not with a Bond, not with the closedness that says ‘unavailable and none of your business why', but - he’d known Laurel for years. Knew her Beta aura, had felt it against his from passing in the hall to begging for her inside him. Her aura right now… was her, absolutely and unmistakably, he could feel the familiarity soaking into him. But instead of the plain Beta it had been it was as though a Beta and some of an Alpha aura had combined.

And then she registers him too, and he’s glad for the skillset that lets him push aside his confusion to face her.

“Hello Laurel.”

 

The conversation does not go well. He didn’t really expect it to. But she deserves to hear the apologies, just a few of the infinity he owes her, and she deserves to be able to confront him to his face. (His internal aura tries to respond to her, to exult in the closeness he hadn’t dared to hope to feel again for so long, to wrap itself in her. He reins it back. That’s not his place, not any more). He can’t figure out how to ask about her aura. Asking about a stranger’s aura is the height of rudeness. Acting as though it should be acceptable because they are not, after all, strangers, would be presumptive in the highest. And he knows exactly what kind of answer a general ‘what happened to you’ would invite. 

“Yeah, I’m sorry too. I’d hoped that you’d rot in hell a whole lot longer than 5 years.” She starts to walk away, turns back for a moment.

“Oh, and not that it’s any of your business, but google it.”

 

He does, of course. Once the whole affair with the kidnapping and the opportunity to use it to set the foundation for his work is over with, now laying plans for the foundry and this Adam Hunt. He starts with the Queen’s Gambit. It could, of course, be completely unrelated, but the way she’d said it, he thinks it isn’t. Most of the articles are about his father and then about himself, but the ones that mention Sara start mentioning her sister too. Her sister, said to have been in a relationship with the late Oliver Queen. Her sister, who had suddenly manifested a mixed dynamic.

He looks that up next. He’s aware of it, vaguely, but the playboy he was before the island hadn’t paid attention to issues like that beyond the occasional joke (that makes him sick to think of, now), nor was it among the many things his life since had taught him. 

He’s a fast reader, at least. Some people with a mixed dynamic don’t have it presenting right away. For some it’s puberty, for some even later than that. Usually the latest is mid to late twenties, but intense events can bring it out suddenly. The article mentions high-passion relations. He imagines that your boyfriend and sister drowning while screwing behind your back would probably… count. 

The realization of what he’s done to her life hits him all over again. 

A picture of them together stands next to his computer. Before it all. He can’t help but be drawn to it for a moment. If he had it to do over again - 

He doesn’t. The article on Adam Hunt lies below the picture. He deletes the windows from his desktop, opens the new ones. He has a mission.

That’s all he can do, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this story deals with a thing whose closest parallel in our world would be non-normative sex and/or gender things, and with a character encountering them in someone else. I don't believe there are bad or negative reactions except mentioned briefly as a past event, but the level and type of attention seems sufficient to warn for so people who would prefer to can avoid it.


	2. Canary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The relevant episode is 3.13
> 
> Relevant information from the rest of the verse: Felicity, Sara, and Oliver are Bonded. Sara made the bargain to go back to the League, but is not dead.

“You need to learn how to veil your aura.” If he can’t dissuade her from this course of action - and no matter how worried he is that Sara will be furious with him (if he ever sees her again…), he’s about entirely sure that he can’t - the least he can do is everything he can so that she will survive it.

She gives him a look.

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” And just like that, it’s there, a veil as thorough and impenetrable as Roy’s or even his. She answers the obvious question before he can ask it.

“Sometimes it’s nice to meet new people without being looked at like a freak. They gave me a referral. The specialist said I was an overachiever.” Then she relents for a moment. “Practicing gave me something to do.”

_You’d know something about that_ he doesn’t need to hear her say. 

Once, he’d promised himself to stop thinking only of himself when it came to Laurel. A Bond he never would have expected then should not change that. That circumstances had gone in a direction he never would have anticipated should not change that. Especially so. 

“I’m sorry.” He says. (For the how many-th time now?) “Can we… try this again?”

For once, they can.


End file.
